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BERTHELS, EVGENIĭ ÈDUARDOVICH BERTEL’S (b. 13 December Julian calendar = 25 December 1890, St. Petersburg, d. 7 October 1957, Moscow), Soviet Iranologist, head of the Soviet school of Persian and Central Asian Turkic studies in the 1930s-1950s. Born in a family of Russian free professionals of Danish ancestry Berthels, after…

BERYĀNĪ (from beryān “roast”), an Iranian meat dish usually served wrapped in flat bread, in later times particularly popular in Isfahan. Methods of preparing it have varied in different periods and places. The 4th/10th century author Aḵawaynī (p. 636) mentions taking the beryānī out of the oven and wrapping it…

Search terms:  بیشاپور bishapour bishaapour bishapor  

BEŠĀRAT (Glad tidings), a weekly Persian journal of news and political comment published at Mašhad in 1325/1907. It was Mašhad’s first newspaper after Adab had been transferred to Tabrīz and was one of many that appeared in Iran after the proclamation of constitutional government. In the masthead on the front…

Search terms:  بساط besat  besaat basaat

BESĀṬĪ SAMARQANDĪ, SERĀJ AL-DĪN, Per­sian poet (fl. second half of the 8th/14th and first half of the 9th/15th centuries). Besāṭī grew up and lived in his birthplace, Samarqand; he became a poet under the tutelage of Faḵr-al-Dīn ʿEṣmat Boḵārī (d. 840/1436), whose pen name was Ḥaṣīrī. Early in his career…

BESMELLĀH, Islamic formula meaning “in the name of God,” more fully Besmellāh al-raḥmān al-raḥīm “in the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,” that stands at the head of every sūra of the Koran (except sūra 9). The formula is also known as basmala or tasmīa. i. Origin of the…

BESSOS, satrap of Bactria and last Achaemenid king (ca. 336-329 b.c.). His career as described by Greco-Roman historians of Alexander’s conquest of Iran is one of moral turpitude. A member of the ruling Achaemenid house (Arrian, Anabasis 3.21.5, 3.30.4), Bessos was appointed satrap (governor) of the important province of Bactria…

BESṬĀM (or Bestām), an Iranian man’s name, now obsolete, which as a result of its popularity in past centuries has become a fairly commonplace name or component of place names. Presumably the name is derived from Old Iranian *vistaxma, though no such word is found in the Avesta and the…

BESṬĀM (or Basṭām), Elamite Rusa-i Uru.Tur, the name of a village at the foot of the ruins of an ancient Urartian hill fortress (Figure 16) in the province of West Azerbaijan (39° N, 45° E), 85 km southeast of Mākū and 54 km northwest of Ḵᵛoy; altitude ca. 1,300 m…

BESṬĀM, or Basṭām (sometimes written Bustam or Bostam), a small town in the medieval Iranian province of Qūmes (also Kūmeš) and modern Ostān-e Semnān. It is located in a large valley on the southern foothills of the Alborz (lat 36°28′ N, long 55° 00′ E). History. Although the foundation of…

BESṬĀM O BENDŌY, maternal uncles of Ḵosrow II Parvēz and leading statesmen and soldiers under Hormozd IV and Ḵosrow Parvēz. They were sons of Šāpūr, grandsons of Ḵorbondād (Dīnavarī, p. 107; Nehāyat al-arab fī aḵbār al-fors wa’l-ʿarab, apud E. G. Browne, JRAS, 1900, p. 238, omits Šāpūr and gives Ḵorbondādōya…

BESṬĀMĪ, leading family among the Shafeʿites of Nīšāpūr from the late 4th/10th through the early 6th/12th century. The first important family member was Abū ʿAmr Moḥammad Besṭāmī who was chief judge of the city from 377/987 to 392/1002. Nothing is known of his antecedents though his name suggests he may…

BESṬĀMĪ (Basṭāmī), ABŪ MOḤAMMAD BĀYAZĪD b. ʿEnāyat-Allāh, a 10th/16th-century faqīh and Sufi of Khorasan. Born in Besṭām, he spent most of his life in Mašhad, a fact alluded to in the title of one of his works, Toḥfat al-marżīya le’l-hażra al-rażawīya. The subject of this book is taslīm (submission), and…